(meteorobs) Handbook for Visual Meteor Observers

[Mark Bostick]

Hello David and list,

This is somewhat confusing.  The basic answer is 75 for freelance, and the
author's life plus 50 years for non-freelance.  Scientific and educational
material is quite blurry.  However, the blurriness is more, who owns it,
writer or publisher.  The 1970 Copyright Act, defined most of our current
laws, and it is easy to find reference for on-line.  The following are
related changes since.

Clear Skies,
Mark Bostick
Wichita, Kansas
www.meteoritearticles.com
www.kansasmeteoritesociety.com
www.imca.cc


1973: Williams and Wilkins Co. v. United States
     Williams and Wilkins, publishers of specialized medical journals, sued
the National Library of Medicine (NLM) and the National Institutes of Health
(NIH) charging that the agencies had infringed copyright by making
unauthorized photocopies of articles featured within their publications and
distributing them to medical researchers. The U.S. Court of Claims held that
medicine, and medical research would be harmed by finding an infringement,
and since the Copyright Act was under revision by Congress, it was better to
allow the status quo to continue in the interim. In the decision, Judge
Davis stated, "the court holds, based on the type and context of use by NIH
and NLM as shown by the record, that there has been no infringement, that
the challenged use is 'fair' in view of the combination of all of the
factors involved in consideration of 'fair' or 'unfair' use enumerated in
the opinion, that the record fails to show a significant detriment to
plaintiff but demonstrates injury to medical and scientific research if
photocopying of this kind is held unlawful, and that there is a need for
congressional treatment of the problems of photocopying."

1976: Revision of the U.S. Copyright Act
     The 1976 revision was undertaken for two primary reasons. First,
technological developments and their impact on what might be copyrighted,
how works might be copied, and what constituted an infringement needed to be
addressed. Second, the revision was undertaken in anticipation of Berne
Convention adherence by the U.S. It was felt that the statute needed to be
amended to bring the U.S. into accord with international copyright law,
practices, and policies. The 1976 act preempted all previous copyright law
and extended the term of protection to life of the author plus 50 years
(works for hire were protected for 75 years). The act covered the following
areas: scope and subject matter of works covered, exclusive rights,
copyright term, copyright notice and copyright registration, copyright
infringement, fair use and defenses and remedies to infringement. With this
revision, for the first time the fair use and first sale doctrines were
codified, and copyright was extended to unpublished works. In addition, a
new section was added, section 108, that allowed library photocopying
without permission for purposes of scholarship, preservation, and
interlibrary loan under certain circumstances.

     In addition to section 108, section 107 is important to libraries
because it contains an exception to the exclusive rights of owners to make
and distribute copies of their works. It states that "the fair use of a
copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or
phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes
such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple
copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement
of copyright." To determine whether the use of a work is a fair use, the
following four factors are to be considered: purpose and character of the
use, nature of the copyrighted work, the amount and substantiality of the
portion used in relation to the whole, and the effect of the use on the
potential market. See Title 17 of the U.S. Code.

2001: New York Times v. Tasini
On June 25, 2001, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision in the case of
The New York Times v. Tasini. In a decisive 7-2 ruling, the Justices upheld
an appeals court ruling that the reuse of a freelance author's work on
CD-ROMs and in commercial electronic databases without the author's
permission constituted copyright infringement. In its ruling, the Court
rejected the publishers' argument that a ruling for the authors would have
"devastating" consequences, requiring them to delete freelance writers'
works in commercial electronic databases. The Supreme Court explicitly noted
in its opinion that deletion of the freelance writers' articles was not
necessarily the only outcome and that publishers could explore other
alternatives. The Justices pointed out that there are "numerous models for
distributing copyrighted works and remunerating authors for their
distribution" such as the system of blanket performance licenses for musical
compositions.
The New York Times now requires permission for electronic republication of
works by freelance authors, but this was not standard industry practice
until the 1990s. Equally important, implicit in the Court's decision was the
recognition that the nation's libraries and archives continue to provide
access to the historical record of periodicals and newspapers. In addition,
the Court's ruling recognized that certain archival media, such as microfilm
and microfiche, do not infringe freelance authors' copyrights. Ultimately,
The New York Times and other publishers chose to remove the freelance
writers' works, as many as 115,000 articles, from Lexis/Nexis and other
full-text databases if the writers did not waive t heir claims for
compensation under the decision.